The Rest is Silence

 

Bob and Sarah died and that was sad

But what came next was, for them

An absolute disaster

They went to Heaven, and it soon became clear

That the great and bountiful hereafter

Was perfect, yes, but also flawed

At a pretty fundamental level

You see - no amount of jokes and stories

Are going to give you things to say

When both of you are going to live forever

They’d done quite well, through years of romance

On a finite supply of anecdotes

Any reasonably funny soul 

Can get by

With the same few combinations 

Of structures for jokes

But that was predicated on the assumption

That one or both of them would die

And be gone forever

And finally their attempts to keep on having fun

Would be a game they’d finally, unarguably won

All that effort would have paid off

Staving off the day

When all the jokes and stories wore too thin

And they found that neither of them 

Had anything more to say

On those first nights together

Years ago

When they were young and quite, quite smitten

It seemed there was no limit to the clever thoughts

And quirks and whimsies they could keep on giving

But now, with infinity stretching away

Bob and Sarah found 

That they’d run out

Of interesting things to bring to the table

They’d made every conceivable sound

Here, in Heaven, with no end

To the days for conversation

Structure was rendered without meaning

Like a perfectly formed TV show

That suddenly gets a second season

Or a pop song that repeats its chorus

Way beyond the point of reason

Endings lend meaning to the things that come before

And it’s hard to keep writing the play after

The act three denoument

And Bob and Sarah knew this, now

And found one last thing to talk about

Remember

When it seemed like time might run out

When we were scared to lose each other

When the days we had were precious

And we held on like we both might die tomorrow